Chairman of Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia, and Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu, were among prominent business leaders and financial experts who attended the signing ceremony for the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos on Monday.
The landmark public offer will see the refinery put 4.1 billion ordinary shares of $0.000013 each on offer at ₦525 per share.
The ceremony, led by Aliko Dangote, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Industries Limited, marks the refinery’s first public offer since it was commissioned in 2023.
The refinery, located within the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos, was constructed over nearly a decade at an estimated cost of $20 billion. With a refining capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, it is Africa’s largest single-train refinery.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the IPO, clearing the way for what the company described as potentially one of the largest capital market transactions in Nigeria’s history.
The offer is expected to open on September 14, 2026, with proceeds earmarked partly to finance the expansion of the refinery’s capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day.
If the expansion is achieved, the facility would become the world’s largest operating oil refinery, surpassing India’s Jamnagar refinery complex.
The IPO follows a $2.5 billion private placement completed in July. At the offer price of ₦525 per share, the refinery’s implied valuation stands at approximately $47 billion.
A fully subscribed offer is expected to increase the total market capitalisation of the Nigerian Exchange by an estimated 30 to 40 per cent.
To attract institutional and retail investors, the company has proposed paying dividends in US dollars, leveraging foreign exchange earnings from refined petroleum products and petrochemical exports.
The Dangote Refinery, commissioned in May 2023, currently supplies more than 80 per cent of Nigeria’s domestic petrol demand. Its future performance, however, will depend on factors including crude oil supply, export growth and refining margins.
Beyond Nigeria, the Dangote Group is also planning a 700,000-barrel-per-day coastal refinery in Lamu, Kenya, with groundbreaking scheduled for September 30.
The September 14 IPO is expected to be a major test of investor appetite and liquidity on Nigeria’s domestic capital market, while potentially giving Nigerians greater opportunity to participate in the ownership of one of Africa’s biggest industrial projects.